Alien Dragon's Mate: Braxan (Science Fiction Alien/BBW Romance) (2 page)

Amelia looked around again. The Pirgks were further away now. They were obviously withdrawing. Whatever they were expecting was about to happen. And the defenders were about to be taken by surprise because Hanson couldn't listen.

She ripped the medpack open and gently opened the layers of fabric that covered Jean's abdomen. There was an ugly wound in her stomach, and it was bleeding profusely. Amelia thought fast. That was much more than the little medpack was designed to deal with.

She dug down into the little pack and got out the burn sheet. It was not designed to work on bleeding wounds, but it had some properties that might work here. She opened the sterile vacuum pack and got out the sheet.

“Help me hold your clothing back,” she said, and Jean pulled the front of her shirt up. Amelia placed the thin sheet on Jean's abdomen, across the wound. Then she patted it close to the skin with fingers that were slick with cleansing nanogel.

“That should do it,” she said, making sure to sound more confident than she felt. But if the patient thought there was a chance, then that would often be enough for them to pull through even pretty bad situations that could otherwise kill them.

Amelia had no idea why those thoughts went through her mind. She wasn't even a medic.

The burn sheet looked like it was stopping the bleeding, and Amelia shifted her gaze to Jean's face. The other woman was staring right up into the sky, and for a second Amelia thought she had died.

Then the wounded woman blinked, and Amelia realized that she was staring at something up in the sky.

Amelia rolled around.

There were some large birds up there, right over the horizon.

No, they were larger than any birds could ever be. And they were coming closer very fast. They didn't look like airplanes or space fighters, because there were parts of them that appeared to be moving, like short wings beating slowly, majestically.

She frowned. Those things sure looked like ...

“Are those
dragons?
” The wounded woman had raised her head a tiny bit.

Amelia's hair had come loose and she stroked it out of her face. There were four of them. They were coming in low and they seemed to have different colors and flowing tails. Sure, there were many strange things in space, and most of them were hostile. Mankind had found that out as soon as the first alien attackers had come along a few decades earlier. But mythical beasts from ancient legends? Surely they couldn't be ...

As if acting on a command, all four flying things swooped down on the gun towers and defenders around the base.

Then they spewed fire. Piercing, hard flames, intensely bright and each easily as long as the being's bodies. The intensity of the light was such that Amelia had to look away, even if she was at least a mile distant. A new sun was about to rise, but even in the crosslight between the setting white sun and the rising red one, the light from the dragons' fire was so intense that it cast long shadows on the sand.

She saw gun towers explode, drones falling from the sky and she heard the short screams from human defenders as their armor was burned off them like paper and they were incinerated within a second.

She winced in sympathy and felt a block of ice settle in her stomach. That was ...
bad
.

But at least there was no doubt anymore. She grabbed her railgun and clutched it so hard she could hear the metal creak.

“Yeah,” she said with a mouth that was suddenly dry, and she could not keep her voice from trembling. “Those are dragons.”

- A
melia -

She got up and stood there, looking on powerlessly as the dragons swooped again and again, incinerating the now wildly fleeing base defenders. She saw some of them shooting at the dragons, but no one had expected the Pirgks to have air support. All the drones had been burned out of the sky, and the gun turrets had gone silent.

The dragons pulled further up in the air. But one of them, shining like gold, circled once over the battlefield where there were only a few defenders left. It was the most elegant thing Amelia had ever seen. No eagle had ever soared as majestically as this dragon did, no dancer had ever moved with this agility. It had a hypnotic quality, because it seemed to Amelia that it was just ... perfect.

Then it picked up its head and suddenly looked right towards her.

“Oh fuck,” she said and instinctively hit the ground again to be as small a target as possible.

The dragon lost interest in the remaining defenders and came zooming right in Amelia's direction. She winced. That could not be good.

It came closer and closer, lower and lower. At any moment it would blow its white hot flame at her and incinerate her and the wounded woman, burning the flesh from their bones in a heartbeat.

Damn. It looked like this was the end for her. She had never thought she'd die in Outward Expansion duty. Sure, some bases were risky, but it wasn't something she had thought much about. Most people who went into space as colonists had great experiences and interesting lives. Amelia had that, too. Until just about now. Because this ... yeah,
this
she hadn't seen coming.

She stayed down on the sand and deliberately didn't look up, but she could feel the dragon's presence in the air above her. It was as if it exuded danger, a danger she could pick up with her whole body.

And then she heard the calm beating of its wings – a strong, deep sound as the dragon soared.

She knew it would burn her at any moment. And it irked her.

No.
If she had to die now, she would look it right in the face.

She got to her feet on legs that were stiff with fear. And she looked at the dragon.

It looked as if it was made of gold. A dull, flat gold, not jewelry, not polished or shimmering or glinting in the sunlight. Just ... gold. Smooth and metallic and still clearly not armor. No, that was the dragon's own skin. Golden and seemingly bulging with strength. It was a sleek thing, and Amelia could see thick ropes of muscle along its sides and its chest and back, bulging in ridges and grooves.

It was the size of a bus and it looked like it consisted of only power and danger. She could just make out individual golden scales on its skin, and the claws on its powerful legs were impossibly pointy and looked like curved knives.

And then its head. Sleek and smooth, with a high forehead and pointy ears that rotated slightly as the dragon inclined its head. Golden ridges, horns and blades stood up from his skull in perfect symmetry and made if look as if it was wearing a crown.

It had a small, square snout and two sharp ridges running down its muzzle. The proportions were natural and so different from the clumsy-looking dinosaurs she had seen in movies that this clearly was a very different being.

But the thing that hypnotized her was the eyes. Two big, yellow eyes with star-shaped pupils, moving calmly. There was doubtlessly intelligence behind them. A considerable intelligence, even. They were set deeply in its head, with thick black hairs surrounding them, making her think of some kind of natural mascara.

But it wasn't makeup. This dragon was not a 'she'. And it was certainly not an 'it'. This was a
he
. Amelia felt it with her whole being.

Inexplicably, the realization sent a surge of heat to her core, and there were unmistakable tingles down below. That dragon was more of a
he
than anyone she had ever laid eyes on. A super-male. He was the most stunningly beautiful thing she'd seen in her life. And here she stood in front of it, completely vulnerable.

It hung in the air above her, a master of the sky and the ground. Everything and everyone were inferior to it, there was no question about it. This was the ultimate being, the pinnacle of creation.

Amelia could hear her own breath, ragged in a dry throat. Her heartbeat throbbed in her head. All of her felt like ice.

Except her girly bits. Down there, she was downright throbbing with lust. As if in resonance with the dragon ... the male dragon ... the power he had over her, the power to take everything from her ... or to give her life ...

She swallowed again. So this was what her death would feel like. And look like. A golden dragon, heart-stoppingly beautiful in all its menace and power and effortless mastery. Probably not the worst way to go.

But he hadn't killed her yet.

He looked at her, and she felt examined, like he was measuring her up, taking her in. It was not a cruel killer, this – he was not just sadistically making her wait for the inevitable. She was sure of it, and his overwhelming male-ness made her start to think that maybe, just maybe his menace was not directed at her. He was genuinely interested.

Then there was a voice in her head, and it was not hers. It was intrusive and unstoppable, but smooth and pleasant at the same time. A man's voice, deep and resonant.

You are mine,
it said.

That was all. But the truth of it made sudden tears spring to Amelia's eyes, and the breath caught in her throat. She had never heard anything so true before. Or so beautiful.

What the
fuck?!
She shook her head hard.
Get a grip on yourself, woman,
she told herself.
That was not my own thought.

The golden dragon hung in front of her and beat the air lazily while its luminous, yellow eyes pierced Amelia's soul.

Fine. Her soul wasn't that pristine to start with. She found some courage and defiance deep in her being, and suddenly she remembered the railgun still in her hands.

She stared right back at the dragon, and it took all her willpower to not break eye contact and look down. At the same time, she slid her thumb along the side of the railgun until it encountered resistance. Then she pressed harder and felt the reluctant click as the power slider settled at the very end of the scale.

Emergency power.

“I'm not kidding,” her instructor had told her during training less than a year earlier. “That setting is for very fucking last ditch use only. Okay? Don't ever fucking use it or I'll seek you out and murder you in your sleep. And afterwards everyone will say I did the right thing. Because you
never
use E power. We clear?”

She remembered nodding, thinking she would never use that. Because why would she need to?  Outward Expansion was a civilian organization, completely peaceful.

Well, now she might. One shot with the emergency setting would fuse all the bullets in the gun to a single solid bar of steel and depleted uranium and fire it as hard as it could. It would completely drain the power supply and wear out the rails in a split second, ruining the immensely expensive gun once and for all with one single shot. If ever there was a time to use it, it was now.

She whipped the muzzle up, aimed roughly at the dragon's golden chest and pulled the trigger. She felt the gun adjust her aim and then she heard a whine increasing wildly as the capacitors were charged beyond their design maximum.

The world exploded in her hands. The next thing she knew, she was on her back on the pink sand with throbbing arms, ringing ears and a sore shoulder. The gun had wrested itself out of her grip and was on the ground several feet away.

And the dragon had a hole in it.

Not right where she had aimed, but close to the root of one wing. That wing had started beating more erratically now, and Amelia could see drops of a black liquid falling to the sand beneath it.

Aah,
the voice said inside her mind.
You challenge me! You are indeed mine. I will come for you.

Then it soared easily into the air.

Amelia was just about to let out her breath in relief when the dragon whipped around and dived right for her. She hit the sand again just as she heard a silky smooth
whoosh
and she felt the searing heat from the dragon's fire. She squealed in horror, but a split second later she realized that the fire was not directed at her, but something behind her.

She looked up. The dragon turned in a lazy arc and rose into the green sky to join its three compatriots. As Amelia watched in stunned silence, they flew higher and higher until they could no longer be seen.

The planet was silent.

She carefully got back up and looked where the dragon had spewed its impossibly hot fire. The sand had been turned to glass in a large patch, and in the middle of it she could see five dead Pirgks, burned to a black crisp. They must have been trying to sneak up on her. And the dragon had casually taken them out. Its own allies.

Jean coughed. Amelia had completely forgotten the wounded woman.

“Shit,” Jean said weakly. “That was intense. But I think you chased them away.”

Amelia let out her breath. Her knees buckled with delayed terror and she plopped down on the sand beside Jean. Then she laid her head back and looked up into the sky where the dragons had disappeared.

She didn't know how to feel. She was relieved that she wasn't dead. But she was also afraid for the future of the base. Very afraid.

She looked to the horizon on the alien planet. The red sun was rising very fast. There was a faint smell of burned flesh in the alien air.

“You think? Somehow I doubt it.”

- B
raxan -

“Back to base,” he said, and he could hear how curt his order sounded. It was unlike him.

The others didn't say anything, just looked at him with their shrewd eyes as if they knew exactly what had happened. He didn't think they really did understand. He himself was far from sure.

He rose into the sky as fast as his wings could take him. It was a little slower that usual. Whatever she had shot at him was still lodged inside him. He could feel it as a dull ache with a strong metallic flavor. It was poisoned, too.

Now that the murderous part of their mission was over, he had time to indulge in some contemplation of what had happened. He usually didn't – nothing good came of it. He did what his emperor ordered him to, and the dragon handled the action with its instincts when he let it loose.